Viva Piņata First Look

By Ricardo Torres, GameSpotPosted Mar 15, 2006 12:23 pm PT

We get an early look at Rare's new kid-friendly Xbox 360 title.

Developer Interview

Get the first details on Viva Piņata in this exclusive interview.

While Rare may be recently known as the developer of the slick first-person shooter Perfect Dark Zero and the colorful and challenging platformer Kameo, the veteran UK studio has been around, in one form or another, for over two decades. Over that time, the studio's oeuvre has touched on just about every genre, including more mainstream genres such as kids' titles. With its latest release, Rare changes gears and revisits its kid-friendly material with Viva Piņata, an original title that draws on a variety of familiar game elements to offer a unique experience with some multimedia ties. We recently had the chance to check out an early version of the game to see what this unique title is all about.

Our demo began with a quick fly-thru of the island, which will serve as the game's setting. When the camera stopped its tour, we were greeted by Dedos, a young woman wearing a festive mask who was there to fill newcomers to the island in on the basics of Viva Piņata's gameplay. Your goal is to tend to a small garden made up of a small plot of land, which is outlined by a white line. The first order of business was to do some landscaping on the unsightly area, which has been overrun with clutter. To do so, our demoer busted out one of the upgradeable tools you'll use in the game--a shovel--and proceeded to mash up all the offending litter. Once the area had been flattened out, the next item to be used was a packet of quick-growing grass, which helped to beautify the bland patch of dirt left by flattening all the debris. After giving the grass a mild watering--courtesy of another of the tools you'll use in the game, a watering can--the simple patch of land started to look inviting enough to catch the attention of one of the island's resident wild piņatas. Yes, wild piņatas.

We'll go ahead and switch gears right now to fill you in on the basic goal of the game, that being to have a garden that's snazzy enough to attract and house the 62 "breeds" of piņatas that live on the island. The wild piņatas will be simple monocolor critters that will gain color once they decide to take up residence on your plot of land. Once that happens, you'll want to keep an eye on them and make sure they're content. If you're lucky, you'll be able to attract pairs of the same breed, who'll take a shine to each other, as denoted by the universal sign of floating hearts above their heads, and head off into a habitat and...dance. Once their jig, which plays out in an in-game cinematic, is over, a stork will pop by and drop an egg that will contain the fruit of their boogying, a baby piņata.

Rare is bringing its expertise in creating bright and colorful worlds to a new joint project with 4Kids.

Attracting piņatas will obviously be key toward building your garden's population. To do this, you'll have to maintain a certain level of appearance for your garden and meet certain conditions, as everything appears to be linked in the game. In our demo, the first piņata attracted to the garden was a worm. Once he took up residence in the garden, he was joined by another worm. The presence of two worms then attracted a bird piņata, who obviously had some vested interest in coming to hang out closer to potential meals.

Once you start to get into the piņata-attracting swing of things, you'll find that there's going to be a good measure of multitasking involved. While you can choose to take on all of the assorted duties required to maintain your garden and piņatas in a happy state, anyone looking to have a mellower experience can hire helpers to tend to the different chores you'll have to deal with while playing, so you can focus on one aspect. If you choose to focus on the happiness of your piņatas, you'll be able to click on each of your residents and examine their personal preferences to ensure that you're doing the right things to keep them happy.

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1 Comments

  • sasuke55

    Posted Sep 26, 2006 12:50 pm PT

    YEAH FIRST BOOM!!!!!!! BABY!!!!!!!! I think this looks cool I might have to try this out under the guise that its for when my 10 year old nephew comes over.

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